FTAA -
COMMITTEE OF GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES ON THE PARTICIPATION OF
CIVIL SOCIETY

CONTRIBUTION IN RESPONSE TO THE OPEN INVITATION

Name

South American Commission for Peace and Security

Organization

International, non - governmental

FTAA INITIATIVE ON THE PARTICIPATION
OF CIVIL SOCIETY

1. - FTAA Viability.

The fact that the FTAA, by its very
nature, is a free trade area of the Americas highlights difficulties
created by the heterogeneity of the countries of the area. There are
nations, for example like Barbados with 265,000 inhabitants and Mexico
with approximately one hundred million people and differences such as
those between Argentina and Haiti or Bolivia and Venezuela. Mechanisms are
being set up to facilitate the participation of smaller economies but
those great differences may well render them ineffective.

There may also be opposing interests
between nations and groups of countries, such as those between the United
States of America and Brazil or with all the MERCOSUR member states. A
good example of FTAA preparation would have been the progressive widening
of NAFTA, however, the United States was unable to achieve political
consensus on that point.

The general objectives in the
declaration appear indisputable to us and are similar to those contained
in the declarations of the WTO, MERCOSUR, the Ibero-America, Americas and
other Summits.

2. - Agriculture

Besides ensuring that the sanitary
and phyto-sanitary measures would not be a reason for arbitrary or
unjustified discrimination between countries or a hidden restriction to
international trade, joint actions taken by nations sharing the same
ecosystems where real life problems occur, will also have to be
considered. For example, the fruit fly that affects Southern Peru,
Northern Chile and Western Bolivia is a major obstacle to sub-regional
trade with possible consequences for world trade.

Agricultural subsidies, from the
outset, should be dealt with the greatest possible transparency, because
they have blunted a number of free trade agreements and can be a bell
weather for the necessary political will to bring the FTAA to fruition.

3. - Investment.

Criteria for setting common rules
for foreign investment should be established, whenever possible, not only
for the creation of a stable and foreseeable environment that would
protect the investor, but also to determine the conditions offered to the
investor to avoid unfair competition between countries that may be
prejudicial to their economies. This matter is of great concern within the
European Union.

4. - Subsidies, Antidumping and
Countervailing Duties.

Although it is important to improve
the rules and procedures dealing with the application of dumping and
subsidies legislation to avoid creating trade barriers within the area,
rules should be considered to protect FTAA countries from unfair
competition from countries producing low quality goods at unbeatable low
costs based on minimum wages, child and prison labor – in essence almost
slave labor – and no social security systems for the workers.

The consequences of this type of
competition have been felt, for example in the spinning, textile,
clothing, footwear and other manufacturing industries that have
disappeared.

Therefore, if we do not protect
ourselves from this type of competition, we are lowering our standards
through a reduction in wages and flexible work contracts to remain
competitive in the whole trade globalization process.

5. - Government Procurement

The whole purpose of this point is
to widen market access for government procurement to all FTAA countries
through mechanisms that ensure openness and transparency in purchasing
procedures and avoid discriminatory practices. However, the vast
differences between the powerful industrial countries, for example the
United States, Canada, Brazil in comparison to Columbia, Venezuela and
Chile, who are in such a deteriorated state, must be taken into account.
The latter will have great difficulty in gaining access to the benefits
offered by this equality of opportunities.

Moreover, it should be noted that
until very recently, government procurement was used as a tool to
strengthen industrial technology in the respective countries by creating
development potential for industries producing sophisticated goods to
compete, under certain circumstances, in the tendering process. We need
not go far to find an extreme example of technological progress; the U.S.
aerospace and aeronautical industries developed thanks to the purchases
made by its own government.

6. – Intellectual Property Rights

An attempt is being made to promote
and guarantee proper protection for intellectual property rights, bearing
in mind recent technological discoveries.

The present intellectual property
mechanism, it should be recalled, was created by the 1876 Paris Union
Convention of 1876 and its subsequent amendments. It was inspired by the
reality of its time when researchers, such as the Curies’, Lumière
brothers, Thomas A. Edison and Marconi devoted a large part of their life
and wealth to succeed in their research work.

The resulting product of their
intelligence was protected by a 15 year invention patent monopoly,
renewable, in certain circumstances, for lesser periods of time. This
would appear to have been a just reward for their efforts and the slowness
of communications of the time to disseminate and exploit those new
inventions.

Things are quite different today.
The inventors are large corporations who invest vast sums of money. The
revolution in communications has made patent exploitation almost
instantaneous worldwide and guarantees a rapid recovery of the original
investment.

Despite the aforementioned, instead
of facilitating the transfer of patented technological know-how with
shorter protection periods and more liberal licenses, there is a global
trend to strengthen intellectual property protection by widening the scope
to incorporate the manufacturing process. This obstructs and greatly
increases the cost for the transfer of technology to developing nations.